


2009 (but make it 2022)

by Fictropes



Series: 2009 no show Dan [2]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: 2022, Comfort, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, YouTube
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:32:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26719069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fictropes/pseuds/Fictropes
Summary: 5. dog dan?  finally talk about that one time (need permission)
Relationships: Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Series: 2009 no show Dan [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1944535
Comments: 19
Kudos: 95





	2009 (but make it 2022)

**Author's Note:**

> [if u would like to scream at me on tumblr! ](https://fictropes.tumblr.com/)
> 
> this is all keelins fault<3 (but thanku for being such a supportive cheerleader:P) ALSO you will have to read part one if you want this to make any sense...sowwy

_February 19th, 2022_

**5.** ~~**dog dan?** ~~ **finally talk about that one time (need permission)**

“Phil!”

  
  
“Yeah?”

  
  
“C’mere a sec.”

  
  
Dan hears a crash, hopes it’s the fucking sock in a vase finally coming to the end of its unfortunate life. 

“What?” And then Phil’s behind him, wrapping his arms around his waist, mouth too close to his neck in a way that’s so.. distracting. “Dan, what?”

“Huh?”

  
  
“You called me in here, remember. You said c’mere a sec and I came running, also I knocked your laptop off the table cos I tripped over the wire. It’s fine, though.” Dan doesn’t even register the words, Phil could’ve launched his laptop out of the window and Dan wouldn’t give a shit - his brain is only interested in being horny. 

“I did.” Dan murmurs, tilting his head to give Phil a little hint, a little please ruin me in the middle of the kitchen on a Tuesday afternoon sort of hint. 

“Stop being slutty in front of an open window.” Phil warns, licks a broad stripe up to Dan’s ear in a way that’s supposed to be off-putting but is actually really doing it for Dan. 

“Stop encouraging me, then. Dick out in front of the fridge is the optimum look.” He wrangles himself out of Phil’s grip so he can turn around and kiss him, kiss him like he’s been doing every single day for the last two years of his life. “Hi.”

  
  
“Hey, you.” Phil grins, brushes a curl from Dan’s forehead so he can plant a kiss right in the very same spot. “What’re you doing here? Fiddling with my penis magnet again? Gonna get a complex if you keep leaving me for it.”

  
  
“That still - one day you’ll use it right and that’ll be the day the earth implodes.” Dan would love to, just for once, say a sentence and have it sound how it wants it to sound. He goes for impatience, for an eye roll in word form, but it always comes out so obviously fond - today is no exception. 

“I am using it right! I have decided that everyone else is wrong.” And they’re still all wrapped up against the fridge, holding each other to make up for the eleven years of lost time. “You smell good, what is that?”

  
  
“Didn’t wash your come off my face from last night, eau de Philette.” 

“You’re so disgusting, did you know that? Vile.” Phil kisses him anyway. “Sorry about getting it in your eye.” 

  
  
“S’alright, you washing it out for me was a very romantic experience.” Dan thinks they’re probably a bit weird, 10/10 on the too in love freak scale. “Can we please go back to you doing things to my neck? It was working.”

  
  
“No.” 

“Phil.” Dan whines, slips a hand beneath his hoodie because maybe feeling him up will push this back in Dan’s favour. 

“I’m editing. You and quickies do not work.” Phil shudders, and Dan thinks he’s won but Phil isn’t _that_ easy. “You demand hours of attention. Later.” 

“Stop abiding to the social construct of time, your video doesn’t have to be up by eight. Who’s to say eight even exists? No one. You know what does exist, Phil?”

  
  
“I don’t know.” Phil sighs, “but i’m sure you’re about to tell me.”

  
  
“Me. I exist. Me and my gaping-“

  
  
“No!” Phil slams a hand over his mouth, “absolutely not. If you finish that sentence then i’ll start another eleven year hiatus.” 

“I was going to say heart.” Dan says, when Phil finally allows him speak. “Me and my gaping heart.”

  
  
“I believe you, I also believe that you’re two feet tall and live underneath my floorboards.” 

“I was! I was going to be romantic, not my fault you live permanently in the gutters.” Dan is also a big liar, but that isn’t important right now. 

“Whatever, stupid boy.” Phil steps away and in a stunning display of grace trips back into a counter, jumps up onto it like it was supposed to happen all along. “What did you want me for?”

  
  
“Sex.” Dan steps straight back into his space, forces his legs apart so he can stand in the gap and continue his horny campaign. 

“Nope.”

  
  
“Fine. The list on the fridge, the one that has been like superglued on ever since I got here.” Dan had pretty much arrived and never left, spent all his time in Phil’s space until Phil gave him a key and made it _their_ space. “What’s five? It’s like crossed out dog and then something about needing permission.” 

“Ah. Well. I have a little tiny secret, but you can’t shout at me cos it’s not my fault.” Phil wraps his legs around Dan’s waist this time, holds him in place. “Promise.”

  
  
“I— promise.” 

“Well, you know how I said dog Dan was already called Dan when I got him?”

  
  
“Yes.”

  
  
“That may have been a little lie. I might’ve actually seen these big brown eyes and these curly ears and thought oh, wow, that looks like Dan. I thought i’d never see you again, so, I thought i’d get away with it.” Phil doesn’t even look sheepish, all bold as brass - actual eye contact. 

“Phil, what the fuck. You replaced me with a tiny little dog.” It’s a bit cute, but Phil isn’t allowed to know that.

“Come on! Even you’ve said he kinda looks like you, he just suited it. I tried it once and he immediately answered, I could hardly it back off him. He was born to be a Dan.” Speaking of Dog Dan, he was lounging on the sofa, on his back, snoring loud enough to be heard all the way in the kitchen. Dan was obsessed with him - constantly. 

“Right.” 

“Dan.”

  
  
“What?”

  
  
“You’re not mad, you are literally smiling.”

  
  
“Shutup! Let me pretend for a second that i’m not just- just completely enamoured with everything you do.” Dan is, it’s that sort of love you read about in books and think couldn’t possibly exist in real life. It’s not a perfect life, Dan still has days, but they’re much easier when you have a Phil Lester to hold you.

“You’re cute, you know. Feel like I could murder you and you’d be all like oh but he did it all.. handsomely, it’s fine, no one avenge me.” 

“Yes, but if you leave the cupboards open one more time I will make you sleep in the guest room.” Dan yawns, half asleep and just wanting to drag Phil to bed for un-sexy reasons now. “Wait.. is that why you don’t want to put him on your channel?”

“I- sort of? Like, there are still people who were there in 2009 and if I uploaded a video with a dog called Dan they would’ve all been.. wait a minute. Is he that hung up that he got a dog look-a-like? But also my other point still stands, it’s been fun to just have him to ourselves.” Phil says, sticks a finger in Dan’s mouth the next time he yawns, and he’s so shocked he just sort of stands there. “Bite it.”

  
  
Dan bites it. 

“Ow!” 

“What did you expect?” Dan laughs, presses a kiss their instead.

  
“I don’t know! It’s all like sexy in the movies, they’re like oh.. fingers. Dicks metaphors. I don’t know.”

  
  
“It’s not bite, though, it’s usually suck my finger.” Dan points out, does just that and is put straight back on the plane ride to horny island. 

“Oh.” Phil's swallow is audible. “Yeah, that makes more sense.” 

Dan speaks around Phil’s finger, a garbled mess of words that are somehow understood. “I know. Can we now return to the issue of my gaping-“

  
  
Phil flicks him right on the roof of his mouth. “Pushing it today, Howell.” 

“Why won’t you let me talk about how much my heart gapes for you?” Dan demands, and it's a fake question, but said with so much conviction that the rosy patch still decides to make an appearance.

“Sounds like a very bad medical thing, should we go to the hospital?” Phil doesn’t take him, instead leans in for a kiss that takes Dans breath away, makes him whine when Phil dares end it. “Or would you take too much joy in a doctor sticking a finger in all your.. gapes.”

  
  
“Only you can stick fingers in my gaping holes.” Dan finally, finally gets to say it.

“I hate you, why did you deliver that like.. wedding vows? I fully believe you just said something nice, even though I know it was rank.” Phil looks just as fond as Dan feels, content in the knowledge that they’re just.. content. Can say all this weird shit around each other and be safe from judgement. “Do I have permission?”

  
  
“Er - what?” Dan thinks he’s finally going to get some holes filled, and Phil always, _always_ has permission for that. 

“To put dog Dan in a video, maybe he deserves all the love in the world.” Phil dashes Dan’s hopes and dreams. “Absolutely deserves.”

  
  
“Yeah— actually. I was thinking that we could.. talk about it? The whole thing. People reacted well to pinof, more than well, that was such an under-exaggeration.”People had gone wild, demanded they make one every day of the year. All the loud buried all the quiet, the 2009 originals who were chomping at the bit to talk about why, why was it so late, why they’d carried a video idea in their non-existent wombs for eleven years instead of just nine months. 

There was of course talk, though it wasn’t often directed at then; Dan was just a bit of a massive creep and looked at people’s tweet, people’s blogs. Are they together? Could they be together? They could be. They look cute together. Dan looks at Phil like he put all the stars in the sky. Phil looks at Dan like he’s home. 

They hadn’t spoken about it at all, to confirm or to dismiss. They just let it be, let people talk, let people write, let people have fun in their own little corner of the internet. There was a mutual agreement of maybe one day. Maybe one day basically i’m gay will have a sequel, and maybe one day Phil will upload a forever home video with a guest star. 

Now’s time, Dan thinks, they’ve had two years to enjoy each other, to be wrapped up in their own little world. Now Dan wants to hold his hand on dog walks, be able to be a little jealous bitch in public whenever someone looks a bit eager around Phil and it be valid (not that jealous.. just a bit.) 

“That was.” Phil agrees, and he releases his hold on Dan just so he can lean in and kiss the rosy patch that still hadn’t disappeared. “I think I’d like people to know you’re it for me, I want to do the whole look at my boyfriend being cute with my dog thing on insta.” 

“Sap.” Dan says, but again with all the fond in the world. “Should we call it Dumped in the train station by bastard Winnie the pooh boy - not clickbait.” 

  
“Oh my god, how did you know? That was on my video list, too! I’d just written it in invisible ink.” Phil tries for suspicious, lands on might be constipated. 

“Same brain cell, duh.” Dan slides his hands beneath Phil’s arse, picks him up just to show off and nearly drops him on the way back over to the sofa. It’s a close call, but the only bad that happens is smacking Phil into the doorway. Dan apologises with three thousands kisses to his forehead, then an offer a blowjob that Phil rejects because horny and near-concussion aren’t good mix - apparently. 

“Do you think it’ll bruise?” Phil is frowning into the black screen of his laptop, squinting like that’ll make something appear. 

“No, it was only a light bonk. I hadn’t picked up any speed.” 

“Light bonk.” Phil giggles as Dog dan clambers over onto his lap to check he’s ok, after deciding he is he promptly falls straight back asleep. “I genuinely think he’d hate me if I tried to talk him on another walk, like call me the worst owner in the world for making me do exercise.” 

“He is a sleepy little dude, we respect that.” Dan wants to steal him, for warmth, but he looks so at peace on Phil's lap that he can’t bring himself to do it. “Right, plan time. What do we want to say?”

-

February 25th, 2022

[Private - 2009… dan Howell is a bitch] 

“We’re not calling it that!”

  
  
“Why? I am, i’m a whole bitch.” Dan is fighting Phil for the mouse, trying to force the upload. 

  
  
“I am PG! Also I’m monetising our love, we can’t do that with bitch in the title.”

  
  
“Oh my god, the capital Lester rumours are true.”  
  
-

February 21st, 2022

_“Ermmmm.”_

_  
  
“Good start. Ermmmm… professional.”_

_  
  
“Shutup! We didn’t plan, you said talk from the soul, from the heart, from the gaping-“_

_  
  
“Stop making things so hard to edit, I beg you.”Phil has a notebook beside him, nothing to do with what he wants to say but what he wants to cut out afterwards - two lines in and he’s already scribbling away. _

_“Hey guys!”_

_  
  
“Hey guys!” Dan mimics, just because he can, because this is actually beyond nerve-wracking and he needs to be a bit of an idiot to stop himself from crying on the spot. _

_  
  
“Dumped live on camera - not clickbait.”_

_  
  
Dan sticks out his tongue, Phil clamps his fingers down onto it in the weirdest stand-off of all time. “Going to behave?”_

_  
  
“No.” It’s not really a no, more of a general noise of disagreement._

_  
  
“Thought not.” Phil lets go anyway. “We really should’ve at least written down a general thing.. made like a diagram, a star diagram thing.”_

_  
  
“Maybe, do you think we can get Raid:Shadow legends to sponsor our gay love story?” Dan asks, fiddling around with his hair in the viewfinder because it looks like he’s been dragged through a hedge backwards. _

_“That was so two years ago, keep up with the youtube memes.”_

_“Whatever, forgot you’d been here since the stone age.” Dan butts Phil's shoulder with his freshly arranged hair, ruins it immediately, but he has all this love in his heart and he doesn’t know what to do with it beside.. be annoying._

_  
“Yeah, and you’ve been watching me since the stone age.” Phil grins, like he’s won an argument they’re not even really having._

_“That’s actually a good starting point, let’s go from there before we fall apart again.” Dan clears his throat, stops head butting Phil and starts the actual video. “Hi, I'm Dan, I’m the biggest Phil simp and I won.”_

_Phil frowns, but then, “I can’t believe I have to actually say that’s one hundred percent accurate.”_

_“Don’t hate it, I wear my badge with pride.”_

_“Phil simp pride parade in the summer?”_

_  
  
“Yes, i’m hosting, the entrance fee will be tell me a Phil fun fact to put in my folder of facts. I know them all already, but i’ll pretend.” Dan has no idea where this is going, but maybe that’s why it's working in the weirdest of ways. They bounce off each other, create this whole world in a single video. _

_“This sounds like a kidnap video, I promise i’m here on my own free will.”_

\- 

_“I’m going to have to edit that out, no more sticking your tongue in my mouth.”_

_  
  
“It’s a good mouth.” _

_“Daniel Howell, would you like to start the proceedings?”_

_  
  
“Are we in court?”_

_  
  
“Yes.” Phil says, instantly. “The crimeon trial today is stealing my heart.” _

_  
“Awwww.” They both say in unison, pull a stupid face and even that doesn’t really dampen the absolute sappiness of it all._

_  
“Right, right. Seriously, I’m sure there are some people here watching this who were also around in 2009. This video is to validate you, no it wasn’t all a wild fever dream. Me and Phil did know each other back then, more than know each other.” Phil squeezes his leg off camera, and it’s all the encouragement he needs._

_“If you haven’t watched basically i’m gay, go watch it now. Hashtag spon.” Dan grins, big and cheesy into the camera. “But honestly it’ll make this whole thing make way more sense.”_

_  
  
“It’s also just a very good video, and you should go watch it anyway.” Phil pipes in, never afraid to show how proud he is of everything Dan has ever done, of who Dan is. _

_“Double spon, love it. But - yeah. I basically sent this dude message after message until he finally took pity on me.”_

_  
  
“I did not take pity!” Phil near screams right down Dan’s ear, “I was like a bit scared to reply because your twitter picture was very much.. my type, and I didn’t want to be a weirdo in your inbox calling you pretty.”  
_

_“He took pity, guys, he’s just trying to make me feel better.” Phil rolls his eyes, big and exaggerated and, as always, fond. “And he did message me back, I had a minor heart attack and was in a coma for eleven whole years.”_

_  
  
“Dan!”_

_  
  
“Ugh, fine. I was not. I just.. it was a big, huge thing. And if you know me then it took a long time for me to accept myself, to open up. I opened up to Phil a lot though, back then. He’s known for a long time, and isn’t he a good person for not making a youtube gossip video about Dan Howell gay?” and he’s still not quite there yet, still getting all the silly out before he can go for the sincere he wants to bring. _

_“Dan— you know.”_

_  
  
“I know, you’d never have done that. I’m just being an idiot cos talking about you to the world is hard because you’re like.. my person, gimme a sec.” _

_“We don’t have to do this.” Phil turns the camera away for a second, takes Dan’s hands. “Really, i’m fine with just an instagram post that confirms it, or we don’t have to at all—“_

_  
  
“No, I want to. I just want to convey how much you mean to me, like properly. I want it to be.. obvious, obvious how I feel and I’m trying to find the words that are big enough.” Dan takes a deep breath, collapses forward into Phil’s chest. “I’m just so in love with you, how do you like.. say that outloud.” _

_“It doesn’t have to be massive, Dan, it doesn’t have to be some huge romantic thing because I already know. I already know how much you love me, you show me that every day.” For all of Phil’s oddities, he always knows how to bring Dan back down to earth after he floats away. “So say whatever feels right, at the end of it i’ll still know that you’re my forever.”_

_  
  
“Ok, now you have to give me another sec because i’m crying into your t-shirt.” _

_-_

_“So. Phil was very important to me, to my whole thing. He was the one person in the whole world who made me feel normal, who made me feel like who I was wasn’t wrong and bad. He was the first proper step in my journey of self-acceptance.”_

_“He likes to give me lots of credit, but he’s done so much good for himself.. don’t let him sneak you into thinking it was all me.” Phil adds, ignores the glare Dan is aiming his way - the worlds softest glare, when they watch the footage back.  
_

_  
“Phil, shush. Anyway, as I was saying, he was. He made me realise I could be me, and that was ok. More than ok. So whenever I spoke to him I was more myself than I was with anyone else, but there was still this mental block, this thing that meant I couldn’t actually even say I was gay.” It was something he’d already spoken at length about, but maybe this will make people realise how deep it ran, that he couldn’t even say it to the guy who he trusted most in the entire world, who made himfeel like he was normal._

_“Oh!” Phil squeaks, getting a lap full of sudden dog. “And this is dog Dan, yes named after the Dan beside me. Will talk to him more at length one day.”_

_  
  
“This whole video should be about the dog, I know, i’m so sorry.” Dan laughs, stroking his little ears because it’s really hard not to. “And, yeah, so. All the 2009 tweets and stuff that you’ve seen were real, they weren’t photoshopped.. I know you guys have been arguing about them, I creep.”  
_

_“He does, i’ve seen him.”  
_

_  
“Beware.” Dan narrows his eyes at the camera, Dog Dan licks his cheeks and ruins the whole intimidation thing he’d been going for. “And as some of you saw I was due to meet Phil on 19th October, all the way back in 2009.”_

_“I feel so old, don’t say that. Stop saying 2009.” Phil whines into dog Dans fur. “It was actually like 2015.”_

_  
  
“No, was definitely 2009.” _

_“Shush.”_

_  
  
“Ok, whilst Phil’s in denial I will just tell you I straight up did not show up, and I didn’t even tell him. And you’re all probably stabbing me through the screen and - yeah. I lowkey deserve it, the chance to be held by amazingphil in real life and I just rejected it? I am an idiot sandwich.” Phil holds one of his hands against Dan’s ear, places dog Dan on the other side and makes Dan say it outloud. _

_“Stop acting like you didn’t have a reason, you just wanna be a featured villain in a marvel movie.” Phil laughs, hands the dog Dan off so he can stand and brush away the fur covering his clothes. “Don’t hate Dan guys.”_

_“Phil is biased because of my gaping-“_

_  
  
“Hate Dan actually.” _

_  
  
“Cutting that out?”_

_  
  
“Yes, Dan, I am most definitely cutting that out.” _

_  
  
Dan returns back to camera with a cheeky grin for a reason the audience won’t understand. “I had a reason, yeah, the whole I used to hate myself thing. But.. that still didn’t mean I couldn’t have given Phil a heads up, a hey i’m gonna sit in my brown room all day moping instead of being with you. I apologised, by the way.” _

_“He did, it was a very romantic on the floor in front of a radiator conversation. I forgave him, obviously, cos he’s sat next to me.”_

_“He did! A huge success, did not drop kick me through the living room floor and into the apartment beneath him. Though, he did sort of act like he didn’t know who I was for months, like properly. He had me fooled, I thought he’d forgotten all about it.” Dan has to add that in, just because he still thinks about the blank look Phil had given him in a hotel hallway._

_“It was amazing!” Phil grins, the tongue out one that makes Dan want to turn off the camera and kiss him again. “I was a very good actor, where is my Oscar?”_

_  
  
“Your Oscar is that fucking sock in the vase.”_

_  
  
“How many times, it’s a friend.” Phil is always so quick to defend the thing, Dan can’t bring himself to just even accidentallybreak it. _

_“We bumped into each other in a hotel hallway in 2020 - our first ever actually meeting - and he looked straight through me. I felt like I was a ghost.”_

_  
  
“You sort of were, considering you ghosted me.”_

_“Oooo! Shots fired.” Dan dramatically falls down against the mattress, clutching at his chest. “I don’t know if i’ll ever recover.”_

_“He was not a good actor, he looked at me like one of those cartoon characters.. you know when their heart comes out of their chest and they float down the hallway? What can I say, I have that affect on all the men.”_

_“Stop talking about all the men.” Dan whines, sits back up just so he can pout all big and stupid at the camera._

_“It’s not my fault! It’s just what my bulging muscles do.”_

_“What your bulge does.” Dan mutters beneath his breath, another clip for the cutting room floor._

_  
  
“Back to the actual point of this video, yeah me and Dan are together, yes 2009 happened, no a group of you didn’t experience a mass hallucination. He’s my human, and also my dog.” _

_Dan looks at Phil then, all soft and heart eyed and something he will explicitly make Phil keep in the video, becausehe thinks that look conveys more than words ever could. “The actual point, Philip, is that the right person will make you feel like who you are is good, who you are is right. I found that person thirteen years ago, and I should’ve realised back then that he understood, that he’d always.. that he’d just accept me, no matter what. So, yeah, this is the part of basically i’m gay that was missing, this part of my journey, Phil is the human being who I am claiming in this video. Everyone else back off, I am feral.”_

_“Oh, Dan, you absolute rom-com movie of a human.”_

_“Shutup!”_

_“It’s cute.”_

_  
  
“Your mum is cute.” _

_-_

February 25th, 2022

“We should just call it.. 2009.” 

“I still think bitch, but fine. Concise… to the point, will make that group of people shit themselves upon seeing it.”

  
“We click the button together?” Phil asks, stilling the mouse so Dan can place his hand over Phil's. 

“Yeah.” And they click it together, leave the internet for an entire weekend and deal with the reactions later. 

**Author's Note:**

> [if you would like to reblog on tumblr, i really appreciate it :)](https://fictropes.tumblr.com/post/630627356896313344/2009-but-make-it-2022)
> 
> sponsored by the word GAPING<3
> 
> ok now this story is PROPERLY over. just the moment she put this idea into my head I COULD NOT REST. i have written this whilst ill so if it seems particularly unhinged.... then just .. that's not my fault!!!!!
> 
> as always, lemme know your thoughts<3


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